ANIMAL DIVERSITY – I (NON-CHORDATES)

Heterotrophic: Refers to the type of nutrition in which organic compounds used in
metabolism are obtained by consuming the bodies or products of other organisms.
Host: Living animal or plant harboring or affording subsistence to a parasite; also a cell
in which a parasite lodges.
Infraciliary system: The entire assemblage of ciliary basal bodies, or kinetosomes, and
the fibres that link them together in the cell cortex of ciliates.
Kinetosome: A ciliary or flagellar basal body.
Kinety: One row of cilia, kinetosomes, and kinetodesmata of ciliates.
Lobopodium: A pseudopodium that is rather wide with rounded or blunt tips, is
commonly tubular, and is composed of both ectoplasm and endoplasm.
Lorica: A girdle-like skeleton.
Macronucleus: Large, usually polyploidy, ciliate nucleus concerned with the synthesis
of RNA, as well as DNA, and therefore directly responsible for the phenotype of the
cell.
Membranelle: Type of ciliary organelle derived from two or three short rows of cilia,
all of which adhere to form a more or less triangular or fan-shaped plate.
Merozoites: Individuals produced by multiple fission of sporozoan trophozoites.
Metachrony: Wave pattern that results from the sequential coordinated action of cilia
or flagella over the surface of a cell or organism.
Micronucleus: Small, usually diploid, ciliate nucleus concerned primarily with the
synthesis of DNA. It undergoes meiosis before functioning in sexual reproduction.
Mutualism: An association whereby two species live together in such a manner that
their activities benefit each other.
Osmoregulation: The maintenance of internal body fluids at a different osmotic
pressure (usually higher) than that of the external aqueous environment.
Parapodium: Lateral, fleshy, paddle-like appendage on polychaete annelids.
Parasitism: An association between two specifically distinct organisms in which the
dependence of the parasite on its host is metabolic and involves mutual exchange of
substances; this dependence is the result of a loss of genetic information by the
parasite.
Pellicle: Protozoan “body wall” composed of cell membrane, cytoskeleton, and other
organelles.
Primary host: The host for the adult stage of a parasite. Definitive host.
Proboscis: Any tubular process of the head or anterior part of the gut, usually used in
feeding and often extensible.